Elizabeth Boardman’s poem, ‘A Wife Remembers’ is a fitting tribute to the men of the Second World War Commandos.
A Wife Remembers
A word in the House, a stroke of a pen,
the country disbanded a body of men,
with fighting finesse and fitness supreme –
the crème de la crème wore the berets of green.
Their training was tough, it had to be so,
how to fight with a knife, how to kill with one blow.
Salerno, Bardia, Dieppe, St. Nazaire, when impossible
odds the commandos were there.
Their raids so successful that Hitler said,
“If captured, no prisoners – I want these men dead!”
Too late he discovered his men were not keen
to battle with those wearing berets of green.
On D-Day, Sword beach they were there to the fore
as they jumped from their craft and made for the shore,
their contempt for the Nazis was plain to be seen
for they wore not steel helmets, but berets of green.
When it was all over – the fighting no more
the first they disbanded, the green beret ‘corp’
who went back to their shire, their town and their glen,
a body of gentle, self-disciplined men.
Yet, forty years on they still meet, it is said,
to talk, – toast their Queen – and remember their dead
who’s memorial stands at the foot of the Ben’
where they trained for the right to be green beret men.
For our freedom of movement, our freedom of speech,
to those who come after, this gospel I preach –
A word in the House, a stroke of a pen, cannot
wipe out our debt to those green beret men.
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